PART II 



THE METHOD OF EVOLUTION 



CHAPTER IV 



THE PLACE OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN EVOLUTION l 

 i. Professor Cope's Table 



IN a table in the Monist, July 26, Professor Cope gives 

 certain positions on points of evolution, in two con- 

 trasted columns, as he conceives them to be held by the 

 two groups of naturalists divided in regard to hered- 

 ity into Preformists and the advocates of Epigenesis. 

 The peculiarity of the Epigenesis column is that it in- 

 cludes certain positions regarding consciousness, while the 

 Preformist 2 column has nothing to say about conscious- 

 ness. Being struck with this I wrote to Professor Cope 

 -the more because the position ascribed to conscious- 

 ness seemed to be the same, in the main, as that which 

 the present writer has developed, from a psychological 

 point of view, in the work on Mental Development. I 



1 From Science, Aug. 23, 1895 (an informal communication). 



2 Preformism is the view of those who hold that the individual organism is 

 ' preformed ' in the germ and its development is in some way an unfolding of 

 preformed parts. Epigenesis holds to a real growth or production of parts in 

 the developing organism. Professor Cope holds with many Epigenesists that 

 these newly acquired parts or functions are inherited (' Lamarckian ' heredity 

 and evolution) ; and by the term ' Preformism ' he designates the opposed 

 (Darwinian) view of heredity and evolution. The terms Lamarckism and 

 Darwinism are used in the following pages to express this contrast. 



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